How to spark and lead brilliant creative projects – Prototypr

Do you wish you could keep creativeprojects running smoothly and also be the leader of successful projects ( and keep your boss/customers happy )?

This article will cover three levels that are required for an ideal creative brief. It also challenges the perception that documents, however thorough can serve as a complete starting point.

It starts with a creative brief — but what is that?

Running the gamut from practical to visionary, a creative brief clarifies the requirements and inspires the team.

As a thought starter, the brief motivates and forms a jump board of ambition. On the other hand it also lays out the practicals; facts, content, budget, timing and constraints — a problem to be solved. It keeps everyone on the same page.

How do you inspire?

Creatives seek to bring different kinds of beauty into the world: that Keats line about beauty and truth. While the appearances and notions of what these are differ wildly, on deeper universal levels these drives are fundamental.

Beauty, in whatever format, is expressed through the interplay of craft and concept: a synthesis of materials, symbols, metaphors, words, stories, feelings, sounds, colours, shapes, code, sequences, processes and dreams. The solutions that operate well for mass audiences are ones that combine the primal level with contemporary applications.

Much creativity is unabashedly stylistic, while others relate to human connections and engagement … and others again to universal questions of meaning and the bigger “Why?”.

Inspiration comes from interesting truths

Your truth

As an entrepreneur, leader or manager, ask yourself what is important to you personally, and what is important to this project. Is it ROI, sales, asset creation, a campaign, the delivery of tangibles on schedule… on a deeper level, is it reputation, long term brand equity, a sense of pride in your business’s appearance or a world-changing initiative?

These are all reasonable. The trick is knowing what is important so that when you choose the creatives, you won’t have to justify your values, you will be on the same page and you can short-list using this lens along with the project parameters.

What kind of creative output do you seek — and what do you need?

Introducing the Hidden Humanity creative briefing framework. Use this model to work through your briefing and choose the elements and expectations that are appropriate to your context.

Level 1 — Comprehension & information — ‘What’

This covers all the practicals of deadlines, budgets, deliverables required, content provided and definables.

Do this through: a structured outline document, preferably approved edited content, a real deadline, budgets, line of communication both with you and with the decision-maker.

Could sound like: “ Information on our utility bills will be beautiful and clear to reduce enquiries to the phone lines”

Level 2 — emotions & engagement — ‘Who’

Documents don’t fulfil the level of emotion and meaning — they can seem logistical, dry, uninspiring. To go beyond a purely information level, there will be questions and dialogue with an end goal in mind. After that, requirements may be tweaked and additional insights added. The creative will want to know what the overall feeling will be, or how the humans will experience an internal change in some way.

Do this through: a coffee, conversations, workshop, meeting customers, a focus group,

Could sound like: “ Shift perception of our brand from traditional to cutting-edge”

As with the development of resources around a human-centered approach, tangibles often look like a presentation / story / sensory experience / illustration / interactions / music / human to human experience

Level 3 — motivation & meaning — ‘Why’

Many projects don’t come to this level. The conversation develops into a trusting relationship with the investment of time and money being respected on both sides. The dialogue connects your why with a bigger truth… Why you do what you do? This why resonates with the creative team, with a shared core understanding. That is where the creative spark comes from leading to memorable creative outputs.

For the creative, the stage is set for deep emotional labour to be done. For the client, there is bravery to face unexpected proposals.

Do this through: deep dives, hang outs, banter, long dinners. The deeper the work, the shorter and sharper the brief statement looks, eventually it could be as simple as Samsung’s: “Be no. 2 smartphone in the market”, or Nike‘s Olympic campaign “Sport is war without violence” (Check out this documentary)

Could sound like: “ Inspire a mass culture change to reduce use of plastics use”

Finding the ‘Why’ or the north star is a depth endeavour, with the boat as an obvious metaphor. Resulting creative work can span anything but often suits a service, a film, a piece of art, a social brand event, interactive online campaign, a fundraiser/kickstarter.